Saturday, October 24, 2009

What makes a good egg?

Until recently, buying a carton of eggs used to be a simple task of opening to check and see none are cracked before putting them in the shopping basket. These days, a staggering set of choices confronted us at the supermarket aisle and demanded our immediate attention to choose from generic to free range, organic to bio dynamic and barn-laid to cage eggs even before you want to buy any. To further complicate matter, there is egg packaging that spells out the production system used to raise their hen. Surely, the endorsement by the RSCPA accreditation on the egg packaging is enough to paw at your heart string and make you to consider this ethical-moral reason between free range or barn-laid and cage eggs. You may be left high to ponder over this ethical decision, but the functional claims of Omega 3 and antibiotic and hormone-free eggs still demand your thoughts before you buy that carton of eggs. Since we have to faced with all this bewildering array of options every time we shop for eggs in the supermarket, my wife and I have been thinking at the possibility of keeping a couple of chicken in the backyard to supply eggs for the the family. We will soon let you know whether an egg from a hen raised on organic principles taste better than a hen in a cage. More importantly, what makes a good egg.

The discount stores here sells only 1 type of free range eggs as prescribed by the EU.

The high end supermarts has eggs that r green (bio), yellow (corn-fed), 4-grain-fed ... roughly at 8 - 10 varieties.

The irony of the free range eggs which r humane to the chooks r in fact still produced from crowded farms, while the consumers r paying 30-50% more. What a scam we thought but it's out of our hands ! Eggs used to be bigger as well when they were collected from the cages ! I am using more eggs as a result, or the cake will not hv the usual fluff !

Hi YG,We missed the historic Harbour Bridge picnic. It was the first time that the bridge was closed to traffic and laid with a grass turf for the lucky 6000 Sydneysiders out of the 190,000 who applied to have a picnic spot on the bridge. The NSW Premier said that it is likely to be an annual event.

Hi Dutchie, I read in the news that there will be a similar ruling here. One of the leading supermarkets has announced that it will phase out its own-brand cage eggs. Paying a premium price for animal welfare, however, will always be an issue for some.Cheers,Phil